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Jonathan Dewald, Rethinking the 1 Percent: The Failure of the Nobility in Old Regime France, The American Historical Review, Volume 124, Issue 3, June 2019, Pages 911–932, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhz315
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Abstract
This article explores the social and economic preconditions of the French nobility’s political collapse in 1789. It argues that the nobles’ position in eighteenth-century society was much weaker than is suggested in recent historical writing, and that this social reality matters for understanding revolutionary politics. Between about 1660 and 1770, nobles’ landed revenue fell, and in the last generation before 1789, they sold a significant amount of property. Over the same period, the state reduced its support and increased its demands; nobles who served as military officers typically lost money doing so, and those who served in high civil and judicial offices fared only slightly better. Partly as a result of these financial pressures, the nobility’s numbers shrank over the eighteenth century, leaving them a very small group, even as the total French population grew. These changes do not explain the political crisis that culminated in the Revolution, nor the political decisions that followed 1789. But they help explain the nobles’ inability to control events as the revolutionary crisis unfolded. Over the previous century, they had lost much of their leverage over other groups in French society.
